DEVIL IN A SUNDAY HAT / ic tasks (12/10 - 16)

[beck.]

    It certainly had been too long. Too long since his peers were stirred into assignments, too long since bees droning in boredom nestled in everyone's brains. Beck hated their restless buzz constantly pestering him to shake off the weekday laziness, to the point he was tempted to drive an icepick through his ear just to shut them up for a while. Never the boy to allow stagnancy as days rotted away into a sandpit of melancholia, the poltergeist took it upon himself to breathe some... well, fun back into the lungs of his dreary companions. They were all so serious sometimes, and it was rubbing off on him -- how disgusting.

    Rolling bony shoulders with a crack of joints, the poltergeist stalled for quite some time on the outskirts of the town square, debating with himself on how to accomplish the feat of attracting the others' attention. With a sharp inhale and a sharper exhale, he licked bloodless lips, raw from his teeth shredding into them whenever a panic crawled up his spine, and croaked as loud as battered lungs could muster, "If any -- any of y'all want so-somethin' 'fun' to do this week, c'mon over for a ta-ask, I guess." Admittedly, his shrill voice was never quite as powerful as, for example, Morgan's when he summoned the various swamp residents to gather. His words scratched and grated against strangled vocal cords, unable to project with only a faltering supply of waterlogged air. Not to mention the tics that plagued his pitiful speech into a stuttered mess. But at least he could get the message across; if death rendered him completely mute, he would've gone crazy keeping all his thoughts inside his head. Flopping onto mud-colored haunches, the disheveled medic fiddled with the fresh bandages binding his forearms, brainstorming activities to toss at the first lucky few who sauntered up.

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[arcy]

[div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 65%; font-family: timesnewroman; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;"]Jim was going fucking stir crazy in his attempts to keep himself occupied. Jim was never good with stagnancy -- he'd singlehandedly tear apart said stagnancy if he could. But, at the least, Tanglewood wasn't as bad as Riverside had been. Closeknit and people were actively working to keep things lively, and all that. Fuck. Jim misses his ship -- he liked the thrill and the danger and the math. And also not being covered in mud all the time, thanks.
But, well, Jim isn't even sure he can go back, so it's up to Jim to make his own fun, and .. partake in other people's. Or events. .. And whatever this was. A task? How vague. But, as it happens, Jim has literally nothing better to do, so the canine eagerly scrabbles up to the ghost once he hears the other's announcement.
"Please. Anything," Jim begs melodramatically, melting into himself for a moment before perking up immediately. He's itching to do something -- seriously, anything. Just as long as it wasn't, like, boring. And his definition of boring was pretty ruined right now.

[glow=black,2,300]— ✰ —[/glow]

[VIGENERE CIPHER.]

[toboggan]

"Sauce one here," he’d request. The after-effects of his stroke weren’t too heavy, unlike he’d expected; thus, any task should be doable - in his eyes, at least.

[calliope]

[ ♡ ] She always needed something to do, so a task would probably be the best option. Of course, the girl was nervous, as she'd never know what kind of thing she'd get. Mira clearly wasn't one to want to step outside of her comfort zone, so she was just silently praying to herself that she wouldn't get a hard task. Although, maybe she was just asking for too much. The girl headed over slowly, offering a nervous, friendly smile to Beck. "I'd like one, please."

[beck.]

    Harsh experience forced the cogs in his brain to spin like there was no tomorrow when he needed to think of solutions -- how else would a child last as long as he did in the merciless slums? Although he inevitably ran bone-dry out of wits when it came to his final hours, Beck prided himself on his cleverness. Too bad impulse and emotion took control more often than he preferred. Stirred from his thought by the exaggerated plea, he only acknowledged the four before him with an addled blink. What was he doing again? Recoiling back from their request for something unknown, the poltergeist shook himself free from the remnants of his common trance, cracking a chorus of joints in the violent process. His attention lagging behind as he retorted to the tail-end of Vigenere's comment, Beck murmured, "I-Is it s'posed to feel like anythin' else?" No emotion attached itself to his voice, much less any restored memory he salvaged from the gossip fluttering about his name.

  The scrawny boy jerked his shoulders into a shrug without thought, glassy stare returning to Jim. Anything? A horrid grin stretched impossibly wide across his snout, the disfiguring scar of a cheek even twitching upwards for his cheshire smile as dozens of razor-blade teeth set in pallid gums exposed themselves. "We-ell, since ya asked so nice-nicely, Jimmy, why don'tcha face one of your fears?" Beck giggled, head twisting to the left as he popped his neck.

    Having used up his best card so soon, his smile dropped to a pout, eyes scanning Vigenere's blurred form before deciding upon a suitable task for such a hard-ass. "Vig, ya get to do so-omethin' fun for everyone -- or at least whatever ya think is fun... like, like a game o-or a party or somethin'." He fought back a gag at his own suggestion; he hated parties, but as long as the captain of the guard would squirm under the idea of one, too, then it was worth it.

    Two down, two to go. Leroy needed something that wouldn't strain him further, what with his recent stroke and all, but Beck didn't want to coddle him either. Beginning to visibly gnaw on the inside of his scabbed lip, Beck rolled his eyes back to stare at the clouds, eventually mumbling out through his teeth, "Le-eroy, ya gotta pull a prank for me, got it? A good one, too, but not -- not as good as mine." He refused to return his gaze from the heavens and back to earth, responding Mirabella with a watery cough that vaguely resembled a strangled sentence: "Ya should -- ya should, um, I du-unno... collect some herbs 'n' supplies for Kiira 'n' me before Morgan freezes everythin'. I'll help if, if ya need --" His stammering broke into a coughing fit, and he tucked his chin to his chest to avoid sputtering stale blood into Mira's face. With his lungs failing after straining his voice for too long, Beck clambered to his feet and turned to limp back into hiding, unless any stragglers sought to receive one of his lousy tasks as well.

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